Dzmitry Bandarenka: West's Patience Regarding Lukashenka Regime Is Running Out

• 19.07.2023, 14:31

EU countries have prepared two types of sanctions.

As the website Charter97.org reported earlier, the EU countries recently agreed to introduce a new package of sanctions against the Lukashenka regime.

Coordinator of the European Belarus civil campaign Dzmitry Bandarenka commented on this decision for the Basta! Telegram channel.

— How can sanctions help stop the military arbitrariness unleashed by Lukashenka, who provided the territory of Belarus for Russian mercenaries? And how can the Belarusian democratic community influence this?

— No sanctions have been adopted yet, but two types of sanctions are known. Some are for the fact that the Lukashenka regime is participating in the war on the side of Russia, and the other is for violating human rights and timed to coincide with the third anniversary of the elections on August 9, 2020 in Belarus.

In general, the sanctions will be applied because for a long time, more than a year, no sanctions have been adopted against the regime. This is the first. Second, according to preliminary information, it was not possible to lift sanctions against Belarusian potash under the guise of new sanctions, because a number of European countries, primarily Portugal, which, of course, is in good relations with Brazil, lobbied for Belarus to be equated with Russia, which has the right to trade its fertilizers, in this regard. Although I think it is very surprising.

We can say that the West's patience with the Lukashenka regime is running out. And these actions — the deployment of “Wagnerites” on the territory of Belarus and, most importantly, the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons on the territory of our country — they pushed the Western countries to introduce new sanctions. Let's see what will happen in the end.